Coach Back In Nba After Loyola Marymount Ordeal

The third is neither an aesthetic nor a warrior but a family man who dutifully attends homecoming games and pot-luck dinners.

All three are the same person, Paul Westhead, as seen at various times by different people.

Throughout his basketball coaching career, Westhead has confounded critics with his complex personality and intricate game plans.

The NBA finally let ``Professor Paul`` back into the laboratory when the moribund Denver Nuggets hired him recently exactly 24 hours after firing Doug Moe.

The Nuggets and Westhead need a fresh start.

Westhead has seen his share of hard times. The Los Angeles Lakers fired him a year after he won the 1980 NBA championship, and the Bulls let him go in 1983 amid speculation he couldn`t get along with his players.

But nothing prepared him for March 4, when Loyola Marymount forward Hank Gathers collapsed during a game and died of a heart disorder. He had suffered from an irregularly-beating heart that required medication.

The Lions voted to continue their season, and despite an emotionally depleting swirl of media attention and relentless stress, advanced to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Tournament before losing to eventual champion Nevada-Las Vegas.

After the season, Gathers` family filed a wrongful death lawsuit claiming Westhead and other Loyola officials had urged team doctors to reduce Gathers` medication because it was interfering with his play.

Westhead`s family and friends say the 51-year-old coach never buckled through the ordeal.

In tough times, they say, Westhead leans on his books, innate toughness and his family.

``The main thing that got him through was the fact that the season wasn`t over. There was still a goal out there,`` said Paul Westhead Jr., an assistant coach at Loyola Marymount last season. ``And my mom was definitely an anchor.

``She is everything he isn`t. She is emotionally expressive. She helps him get in touch with his feelings.

``Maybe the happiest I ever saw him was when the season ended-when we lost to UNLV. The ordeal was over.

``They`re accusing him and others at the school of doing things the Marquis de Sade would never do. Well, he did everything he thought was right, and Hank did what he thought was right.``

Jay Hillock, a Lions assistant under Westhead who succeeded him as head coach, said: ``Paul is a veteran. He`s gone through a lot, so he`s strong. It`s tough to put this in words, but he feels you should do your thing for the dead and then get on with life because you only have so much life.``

It hasn`t been that easy for the Westhead family.

``We will never get over this,`` said Westhead`s wife, Cassie. ``We`re still trying to cope. I think it`s changed Paul. You go through something like this and you become a more human person.

``Maybe Paul doesn`t agree with me, but after something like that, I was ready for a new beginning. It was time to move here.``

At a news conference to announce his hiring as Nuggets coach, Westhead said, ``It`s something that never goes out of my mind. It`s never been easy, but I can set my mind at ease and at the same time feel great hurt and compassion.``

It`s a trait that might be credited to his unconventional background.

At St. Joseph`s College in Philadelphia, where he played for Jack Ramsay, Westhead immersed himself in the liberal arts, became enthralled with Shakespeare and decided to earn a master`s degree in English.

He wrote a 180-page thesis disputing a scholar`s doubts that Shakespeare wrote the obscure play, ``Titus Andronicus.``

At Philadelphia`s La Salle College, where he began his head coaching career in 1970, Westhead taught Shakespeare, told jokes so subtle he had to sometimes explain their punchlines and quoted literature so frequently local sports writers began giving out author-of-the-year awards.

During that time, he read such works as ``Psycho-Cybernetics,`` ``The Inner Game of Tennis`` and ``Zen and the Art of Archery,`` which led him to order his players to shoot without the ball and to practice free throws with their eyes closed.

More significantly, that also was the time he settled on the fast break as the optimum path to victory.

When he left the college game, Westhead shifted from classics to soap operas. His career, that is.

The drama began in 1979 when Westhead`s friend Jack McKinney brought him to Los Angeles to assist him with the Lakers. The plot thickened when McKinney was injured seriously in a bicycle accident and was replaced by Westhead. The Lakers won the NBA championship, and Westhead was hired as head coach for the next season, replacing his friend in a controversial move.

Westhead`s Lakers won the Pacific Division title in 1980-81 with a 54-28 record. But 11 games into the 1981-82 season, Westhead was fired. It happened, ironically enough, the day after Magic Johnson complained he was unhappy with Westhead`s ``patterned style of play.``